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Scene 26: Samuel Joens and Victor Green

Samuel Joens and Vic Green nervously watched the recorded Julian West press conference. It was no doubt a trial balloon—not a big network interview—but from the content of the interview, it was clear that they would be seeing more of Julian in public, plugging the Amendment. His comments were brief, and cautious (well, almost content-free), but the reporters’ questions made it plain that they were hoping for a West-versus-Green drama.

Green shut it off, and asked, “What do you think?”

Joens replied, “A statement, by you? Forget it, far too soon.”

Green was silent, and so Joens addressed the elephant in the room. “They are going to leak the story about your past, you might as well accept that. When they do, you tell your version, it will have to suffice. It’ll blow over. You should stop thinking about it, now.”

“You’re right.”

“Think about this, instead. The Socialists are disorganized—our technocrat wing is making too much noise. You and I need to set up a meeting with McCallan and tell her to put a sock in it.”

The Socialist Party had officially come out against the Amendment. Most analysts believed the party’s true motive was that many of the citizens who relied heavily on social services would fail to pass the Test. And Socialists tended to get a disproportionate share of their votes. Of course, the party’s publicly-stated reasons sounded loftier and less self-interested than this.

But quite a few Socialist politicians were not on board – they liked, at least, the intent of the Amendment, on quite principled grounds.

A lack of party unity, though, could affect the vote in Nebraska, which could tip the scales towards passage.